I was wondering if anyone knew of any now-famous people who played quiz bowl (in some form) at some point; obviously the list of quiz bowl players who have appeared on jeopardy is pretty long, but I don't know how many otherwise famous people there are who played the game - I recently saw this http://www.rivertownsenterprise.net/Riv ... 52512.html which shows that Mark Zuckerberg played in high school (well, he played in Westchester, called "Academic Challenge") but I don't know of any others. It would be interesting to see if any other former quiz bowl players have reached celebrity status in some way.

Current (2020) presidential candidate Peter Buttigieg competed for two years on the Quiz Bowl team for St. Joseph's, IN (the school's name at the time). During his junior year, he was third on the team in scoring and played at the National Academic Championship at Loyola Marymount University in Washington DC. During his senior year (2000), he captained the team to a 9-1 league record that shared the season title. Overall, during the time Pete was a player, the team won 29 games against 18 losses.

Ben Dillon, Saint Joseph HS
Indiana State Quiz Bowl Board

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast!"

Current (2020) presidential candidate Peter Buttigieg competed for two years on the Quiz Bowl team for St. Joseph's, IN (the school's name at the time). During his junior year, he was third on the team in scoring and played at the National Academic Championship at Loyola Marymount University in Washington DC. During his senior year (2000), he captained the team to a 9-1 league record that shared the season title. Overall, during the time Pete was a player, the team won 29 games against 18 losses.

so what ur saying is if he gets far he'll be retconned into the nac hall of fame

I have an in-person anecdote. My Upper Arlington High School team, on the still-running "In The Know" TV show in Columbus, OH, defeated Richard Cordray's Grove City HS team in 1975. But he got back at me, by becoming a 5-time champ on Jeopardy! (I was one and done), and going on to fame and power as Ohio AG and later gubernatorial nominee, with being head of the CFPB in between.

While he never did anything at the national level or, as far as I know, in college, Sammy Gelfand was a serious player in high school at the local level. He attended Von Steuben, which is a magnet school in Chicago that played a lot of local tournaments at the time, graduating in 2005. He was on the IHSSBCA All State Team.

He started as the Golden State Warriors analytics director when Steve Kerr got hired and is credited with their push to make 300 passes per game. When Steph Curry was injured last year, he insisted that Gelfand sit next to him during games so that they could talk about the games as they happened. Gelfand is now working for the Pistons.